Carolyn Bosher Maloney was born on February 19, 1946, in Greensboro, North Carolina. After earning a B.A. from Greensboro College in 1968, she worked as a New York City Board of Education employee (1972-76); a legislative aide and senior program analyst for two New York State Assembly committees (1977-79); an adviser and director in the office of the New York State Senate's minority leader (1979-82); and a Democratic member of the New York City Council (1982-92). She also volunteered for Mario Cuomo's mayoral and gubernatorial campaigns in 1977 and 1984, respectively. In 1992 the voters of New York's 14th Congressional District elected Maloney to the U.S. House of Representatives, where she has served ever since, though in 2013 her district was renumbered as the 12th. Maloney is also a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

During her years in Congress, Maloney has voted NO on: banning federal health insurance policies that cover abortion-related services (2011); restricting the interstate transport of minors for the purpose of helping them obtain an abortion (1999 & 2005); making it an additional criminal offense to harm a fetus during the commission of a crime (2004); banning the procedure commonly known as “partial-birth abortion,” except in cases where the pregnancy either threatens the mother's life or is a result of rape or incest (2000 & 2003); allowing the use of vouchers that enable low-income parents to send their children to private or parochial schools (1997, 1998, & 2011); opening the Outer Continental Shelf to oil drilling (2011); barring the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases (2011); authorizing permits for, and the construction of, new oil refineries (2005 & 2006); requiring photo ID for voting in federal elections (2006); and prohibiting product-misuse lawsuits against gun manufacturers (2003 & 2005).

Meanwhile, Maloney has voted YES on such matters as: enforcing strict limits on carbon-dioxide emissions (2009); extending a moratorium on offshore oil drilling (2006); raising CAFE standards for American-made automobiles (2001); prohibiting oil drilling and development in Alaska's ANWR region (2001); implementing the Kyoto Protocol (2000); allowing four weeks of paid parental leave for federal employees when they become parents through birth, adoption, or a foster care program (2009); investigating the possibility of impeaching President George W. Bush for allegedly lying about Iraq's WMD threat (2008); and pulling all U.S. troops out of Iraq as quickly as possible, notwithstanding the recently initiated troop surge that would ultimately help win the Iraq War for the United States (May 2007).

Favoring “comprehensive immigration reform” legislation that would “offer hardworking immigrants an earned pathway to citizenship,” Maloney has co-sponsored many bills designed to help pave such a path. She is also a longtime supporter of the DREAM Act, intended to normalize the status of illegal immigrants who first came to the U.S. as minors and are still younger than 35.

Maloney supported the Obama Administration's controversial “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” (DACA) program, initiated in June 2012 to guarantee that most DREAM Act-eligible individuals would be granted legal status and work permits for two years. She likewise backed Obama’s November 2014 executive order known as Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA), which protected millions of illegal immigrants not covered by the aforementioned DACA edict, from deportation. “This executive action will help keep families together,” Maloney said of DAPA. “It will boost our economy and generate new tax revenue. It will help end the daily fear, distress and heartbreak that is unnecessarily inflicted on millions of undocumented immigrants.”

In May 2015, Maloney introducedlegislation to expand background checks at gun shows. That same month, the congresswoman introduced the Firearm Risk Protection Act, a bill that would: (a) require people to purchase liability insurance coverage before being permitted to buy a weapon, and (b) impose a fine of $10,000 for failure to do so. “We require insurance to own a car, but no such requirement exists for guns,” said Maloney. “The results are clear: car fatalities have declined by 25 percent in the last decade, but gun fatalities continue to rise.” Contrary to Maloney's claim, however, firearm-related homicides in the United States had declined by more than 50% since 1993. Moreover, Maloney failed to address the fact that the vast majority of gun offenses are committed by people who purchase their guns through illegal channels.

For additional information on Maloney's voting record on a range of key issues, click here.